I’m buggered tired, so I’ve got nothing really substantial for you today. I did, however, want to show you two trailers that have recently hit the net; let’s kick this off with some Stark awesomeness, huh? 😉

I am positively salivating – if I watch nothing else next year, my year will still be complete if I only get to watch the HBO adaptation; although I’m thinking now that a re-watch in Winter would be seven kinds of kickass… 😀

Next up, here’s a trailer for a South African movie hitting our big screens on 24th December; not the kind of Christmas movie you were expecting, I’d say:

What do you think? I might actually go and watch this. Who knows? After District 9, things may be looking up for our movie scene… Check out more info here.

Last, but definitely not least, Blake Charlton posted a vid which very quickly shows how Todd Lockwood created the cover artwork for the eagerly awaited Spellbound (Amazon US, Amazon UK); Todd is an incredible illustrator and it’s great to see his process. 🙂 Blake’s also got a link to the proper-length video; the one below is sped up:

Finally, here’s the link to Suvudu; all the info about the Stephen King chat is there. 🙂 Wish I could stay awake (and stay off work) to check it out!

For those who don’t know it, the King has got a new novella collection out, titled Full Dark, No Stars. 🙂

I should be getting my copy within the next couple of weeks, and as soon as I do I’ll get stuck in. I absolutely loved Under The Dome and even though I’m really looking forward to Stephen’s bigger upcoming projects (a sequel to his absolutely terrifying The Shining and another Dark Tower book), I’m gonna dive into Full Dark, No Stars ASAP. 🙂

Here’s the book trailer for you:

And if you’d like to get a taste of what you can expect from the book, check out the following excerpts:

(Just click on the story-names; you’ll be taken through to the excerpt-page on the website)

Very, very chuffed for Paul that he got the chance to write a novel focusing on such a badass character! Here’s hoping that the story behind the cinematic is also included in the novel! 🙂 He’s already sent in the first draft of the novel, so everything looks a-okay for the December release date!

Paul’s Crosscurrent (reviewed here) showed that he has an awesome understanding of Star Wars, so this will, most probably, be awesome. 🙂

Now for Wheel of Time news!

Check out this post over at A Dribble of Ink; Aidan gives us an extended blurb of Book Thirteen of The Wheel of Time, Towers of Midnight. If you haven’t read it yet, I’ll say this: Perrin and Mat.

🙂

And lastly, news of the Dark Tower movies!

Thanks to my buddy Lood, I can tell you that Ron Howard has been tapped to direct a trilogy that’ll bring Stephen King’s absolutely massive and brilliant series to the big screen. Just how he’s planning to cram 7 novels-worth of plot into three movies I have no idea, but this is Ron Howard, and I’m sure he’ll do movies that’ll be as true as possible to the King’s epic. 🙂 Check out the info here.

That’s it for now,

Have an awesome weekend!

Be EPIC!

P.S. Oh, and here’s something you all have been drooling for – the first pic of Thor. 🙂

Now, I hope most of you have read Under the Dome and have given yourselves over to a King-fest (I know I would like to!), but if you’ve read of Stephen King’s work and are starved for new material, you’ll have to still wait a bit. 🙂

The King has announced one project, and the web is a-buzz with rumors of another – the projects being a return to the worlds of The Dark Tower and a sequel to The Shining.

The King has said that he’ll be writing either a novel or a series of interlinked stories set between Volume 4: Wizard and Glass, and Volume 5: Wolves of the Calla, and that these stories (or the novel) will have the title The Wind Through the Keyhole. There has been much debate on this, with some saying, basically, Leave It Alone, and others foaming at the mouths for more Dark Tower material; I’m of the latter – The Dark Tower saga is such an incredible tale that I would love another addition to it – goodness knows that the worlds King created for the series (worlds which link to his body of work in many ways) have almost limitless tales waiting to be told! 🙂 (Thanks to Piotr for the info!)

I’ll keep you updated on news concerning The Wind Through the Keyhole, though, 🙂

Now, concerning a sequel to The Shining, King hasn’t yet decided whether to actually write the book or not. The story might focus on Danny, he who has the Shine, as a 40-year old, and might be titled Doctor Sleep. It’ll be interesting to see in which direction King takes the character and events, and I for one am, of course, itching to read it! 🙂 (Thanks to Lood for the info!)

What do you think? Return to the Dark Tower or write a sequel to The Shining or both?

So I’m finally done, and I feel kind of drained. I’m not relieved -to the contrary, I wish it could have gone on longer- but I am glad that I’ve finished Under the Dome. This is a book I’ll be celebrating as long as books and storytelling exist, a book that I’ll always be happy to talk about.

I received (was very lucky, being one of 6 readers in South Africa) the 187th proof copy of Under the Dome from a very cool lady who runs this blog after I had found her on Twitter and sent an @ her way – Twitter is so damn awesome! 🙂 And when I had the copy in my hands (it came with a plastic enclosing-sleeve, even), I was trembling. And this was after waiting 3 years for the book. And back when I heard about it, I never once thought that I would be lucky enough to be given a chance to read it before publication! But I did, and let me tell you, it was definitely worth the 25-year wait (that’s how long the King took to write the book)!

I dare every one of you out there, be you a fan of Stephen King or not, to read the first chapter of Under the Dome when it’s released. I dare you. Because I tell you what, you wont want to put it down. You might, I allow, but with just the first section (focusing on a plane and a little bird) Stephen hooks the reader and pulls, pulls until you tumble all the way in. The Dome literally closes around you, and if I could paraphrase Ray Bradbury’s opening line of Fahrenheit 451 I would, but I don’t want to, yet I think you understand what I’m getting at. Being pulled in was at once terrifying and exhilarating.

Getting further into the book, Stephen starts to showcase that amazing eye for characterization he is known for – the back of the proof states that Under the Dome features “more than 100 characters” and that’s no lie, trust me. The main character-group (those who get the most POVs) are headed by Dale Barbara on one side and Jim Rennie on the other, but there are so many other characters (including an awesome Corgi that had me wiping away tears at the end) representing so many different and conflicting points on view (conflicting, yes, but doesn’t everyone’s POV come into conflict with someone else’s?) that you not only are immersed in their lives, hearts and heads, but that the town of Chester’s Mills comes so vibrantly alive with them that so can actually convince yourself that you can see these places and people without any apparent effort. Match Stephen’s amazing characters to his incredible ability to build worlds, and it takes the breath away. You will hate some the people you will meet; you will love some, too. Many will surprise you, even with how deep they fall or rise, and all of them will speak to something within you. What are characters in novels, when it comes down to it? They are all echoes and explorations of what we could be, if the world was a bit different, and Stephen understands this. I’ve got those I love and those I hate fixed firmly in my mind’s eye, and once you’ve read the book, you’ll agree that some are very welcome, and some not so much.

Something that also kicks the book into high gear from page 1 is the structure of it; I’m sure you all know that Stephen King doesn’t really use chapters – instead, he breaks the narrative up into myriad sections, with each section consisting of around 20 parts, sometimes more or less, (sounds like such a terrible word to use but I can’t think of anything else at the moment) and he does the same here. But the thing that leapt out at me as soon as I hit the second section-chunk was that he was drawing our attention to a specific scene or event or character in that section, and once I understood that I had to check myself to avoid racing through the book; it really served to ramp up the pace, which each section delivering a gut-punch, repeated all the way to the end, until the final, incredible climax. Now, I’m sure that there’ll be an opinion different to mine on the climax of Under the Dome (and I welcome it), but just remember one thing; Stephen has been doing this for a long time now, and he is the master at it. :-), but all I can say is I loved it, it was fitting and incredible, it’s still sinking in.

Under the Dome is, in all ways, an incredible novel, and Stephen an incredible storyteller (anyone who calls him a novelist should be smacked upside the head), and Under the Dome is another rampaging super bestseller, no doubt about it, but it’s also a book that you’ll want to re-read and re-live more than once; Stephen has a way of layering his work, a way of raising and lowering the blinds that’ll have you once again settling that book in front of you and being terrified to death and back. There was for me a moment set in a pantry that creeped me the hell out but hand me laughing myself sore, too; the only guy I know who can do that is the King, and the wonderful pleasure of books would never have been the same without him and his work!

I give this book a very strong, fist-pumping-in-the-air 9 /10; you’ll enjoy being under the Dome, no doubt about it!

So I took a bit of a break from the blog to finish watching the second season of Supernatural. 🙂 We finished it last night, and will probably start watching the 3rd season today, and I have to say that I’m impressed. I knew Sam was going to die and that Dean would do a deal at the crossroads to bring him back, but I didn’t know that their dad would put in an appearance! That was a goose-flesh moment if there ever was one! Very cool! And now that the Yellow-Eyed demon is dead it’ll be interesting to see what the brothers have got to face in the 3rd season, though with all the demons that were released (an awesome moment that took me back to Smallville and the release of the Phantoms from the Phantom Zone) I’m sure they’ll have their work cut out for them. 🙂

We also watched the movie-adaptation of Jose Saramago’s Blindness on the weekend… The only thing that spoiled an otherwise excellent movie was the motivation of Julianne Moore’s character – being the only person who can see among hundreds who can’t, she decides that she’ll let herself (and the women who joined her) be subjected to rape for food. Huh?! Maybe someone can explain this to me, but putting myself in that position just wouldn’t be something I would want to do. You have such a huge advantage over everyone else, and you still want to go ahead and punish yourself like that? For what? Anyway. The rest of the movie was great, and I will recommend it, but I will also be reading the book at some time. 🙂

I am now about 400 pages into Stephen King’s Under the Dome, and it’s incredible so far! 🙂 The King is definitely pulling out all the stops here, and I’ve been getting that same epic-vibe from Dome that I got from The Stand, even though The Stand was a cross-country kind of novel and Dome is set in one town. The characters are amazing, the events awesome (and terrifying), and it’s really shaping up to be a shit-your-pants ride. 🙂

On to the Wheel of Time – I’m really digging the titles for Book 13 and 14! 🙂 Towers of Midnight is such an awesome penultimate-book-in-the-series title, don’t you think? I totally agree with those that have covered it so far that we might see a resolution to the Seanchan plot, though when you think about the outrigger novels that RJ had planned, maybe not. 🙂 But at least we can hope for Tuon and Rand to finally meet and cement the Seanchan as allies of Rand in The Last Battle. And the last book – A Memory of Light. Wonderful! 🙂 Thanks TOR, Harriet, Brandon! 🙂

Now for a blogger-birthday: I completely missed Mark Chitty’s BDay! (Sorry Mark!) I hope you had an incredible day, got plenty of awesome books to read, and will have another incredible year! 🙂 All the best!

David will also be bringing me the entire first season of Legend of the Seeker today, so I’ll have a review of Season 1 for you soon. 🙂 I have to say, I’m not particularly looking forward to it, but since I am a fan of Terry Goodkind’d work, I’m sort of honour-bound to at least give it a go. (Wasn’t impressed with what I’ve seen so far, but I promise to be more optimistic!)

So, I’m also busybusybusy relocating the blog. 🙂 The launch will happen as soon as I’ve finished Under the Dome (that’ll be the first review), and I’ll make an announcement here with a link to the new blog. 🙂 This blog will still be around (as will all the posts on it), and David and I will still be the review-team, but I’ll be using this blog for my writing-stuff and any non-SFF stuff that I want to chat about. 🙂
And I have to say, so far, Blogger is pretty cool.

What’ll I have coming up in the next few weeks? Well, hard to say. 🙂 I’m hoping to have finished All Yesterday’s Tomorrows, and then I’ll be really sinking in to Brent Weeks’ work. 🙂 I’m also itching to give Glenda Larke a go, and then get my re-read of Steven Erikson done so that I can read Dust of Dreams. I’m also hoping to get an ARC of The Other Lands (available to order now!), and then there’ll be a host of indie-published books that I’ll be reviewing (have to get those done!). Will everything work according to plan? Probably not! 🙂

Anyway, that’s me for now – will be back with another post tomorrow. 🙂